Notes and Editorial Reviews

This release is a wonderful selection of concertos and other works featuring the flute from the 18th and 19th centuries, this box showcases 14 composers who championed the flute, each in their own way, with refined and idiomatic music for the instrument. Vivaldi and Alessandro Scarlatti were active during the 1720's, an era of transition from the end-blown recorder to the more powerful and easily tuned side-blown transverse flute common today. The works in this set by Scarlatti include concertos for both, while the modern flute is the star of the remaining music, from Vivaldi's complete Op. 10 concertos through to the fine F minor concerto by Buchner, a 19th-century German composer active in Russia. C.P.E. Bach, Benda and Quantz all servedRead more in the court of Frederick the Great - a gifted amateur flute player who demanded works for his instrument from the musicians in his employ - and this accounts for the great contribution these three composers made to the repertoire. From later in the 18th century we have the inventive and idiomatic flute music of mozart, along with that of several of his contemporaries, Germans Danzi and Hoffmeister, the Bohemian Rosetti, and the Frenchman Devienne, whose worthy music was thankfully revived in the 1960's by Jean-Pierre Rampal. Joining Buchner in the 19th century are the Italian Mercadante and Swiss-born Du Puy who was active in Scandinavia. Both noted opera composers, their sense for breath and melodic line no doubt informed their fine flute music. Read less